Holy Cow Batman!

The BBC will transmit, via satellite, a free TV News and Information Channel in Farsi to Iran as early as 2008. Richard Sambrook, BBC Director of Global News, writes:

the new channel will of course be editorially independent. Since the launch of the World Service in 1932, successive British governments have recognised that for the BBC’s international news to be credible, trusted and respected by diverse audiences around the world, it must be truly independent.

Interestingly, he also writes, in the same post:

The service will reflect the BBC’s core editorial values of impartiality and fairness and crucially bring a broad range of international reporting to an audience which cannot always get access to free and independent information.

Hmmmm . . . “editorially independent”? Do the core editorial values of impartiality and fairness transcend the independence debate? Will the Iranian people buy into the BBC, or will they see it as yet another minion of the “Great Satan” ? Is this fancy schmancy colonialism cloaked in PC values, or are does this represent a new media evolution?

Time will tell. This bloggers fingers are crossed in the hope that history will view this move favorably.